Enterprise Attribution for 7-Figure Brands

[00:00:00] Taylor: Welcome to a very special episode of the E-Commerce Playbook Podcast today. Know this is not a celebrity death match. No, we are not here. To scream at one another. We have found common ground. Y'all. I'm excited about this announcement today. I'm joined today by the legend, uh, Austin Harrison, the founder and CEO of North Beam Man.

[00:00:20] What is up?

[00:00:22] Austin: So great to see you. Uh, it's funny, you know. Um, I think a lot of people would be surprised about our announcement, us working together, which I think is awesome. I know we've jousted, uh, or, you know, maybe you being better, you're better at me than all that, so,

[00:00:37] Taylor: Well look here. Here, here's what I can appreciate is that I like people that have strong points of view on the world and have a genuine interest to serve their customers and figure out how to help make their business better. And intellectual sparring is. My love language. It's where I like to sharpen my own mind against other smart, smart people.

[00:00:59] And you have definitely been, uh, someone who's I think equally interested in that. If I could, uh, characterize you correctly, Austin. Is that fair?

[00:01:06] Austin: I, well, I, I do it quietly. You're, you're good

[00:01:08] at, you're, you're more fun. You put it out there in the world. I, I do, I do. Probably close doors. I'm better

[00:01:15] or maybe I'm not, I dunno.

[00:01:16] Taylor: I don't think people, like, we've never really told our story together. 'cause I think you and I go back a long ways actually. Um, we had a meeting, I was looking back in our email history that goes back to October of 2020. So like just, we actually broke a lot of probably human norms and met in person mid pandemic and sat around a table and you shared your vision for what you were doing with North Beam.

[00:01:38] And so for those people who don't know, since this is my podcast, maybe, uh. It might be true that they haven't heard of you. So let's, uh, let's start by, give, give us a little bit about North Beam, who you are and maybe where the journey's gone from since 2019. And then we're gonna talk about where you and I have found our common ground.

[00:01:54] Austin: I like

[00:01:55] that. So, yeah, 20, uh, you know, early 2019, I connected with, uh, Dan Wang, our CTO. Um, I met him through a guy named Ben Mann, who, if you don't know who he is, he's the, um, co-author of GPT. Uh. Open AI and he's the co-founder of Anthropic. Um, so yeah, that's how Dan and I met Dan Wang. Ben said that Dan was quite talented in AI and we were excited about going on an the AI journey.

[00:02:24] And, uh, my Ai AI journey started like 20 17, 18, and Dan started in 2010. He built his first AI agent in 2016 that won at Pokemon. So he, he has quite a bit of experience. But yeah, I mean, when I met you, when I met everyone, people I think thought we were a little crazy at work working in machine learning and AI and, and trying to help do a better job of measure, uh, marketing.

[00:02:47] That was it. And you and I met and, and, uh, here we are today.

[00:02:51] Taylor: Yeah, and I think at the time, if I look back on the paths that we were both on, is that I, um, was very committed to sort of the financial. Measurement of a company is the center point for how things operate. And I think that the world that I was occupying and attribution were in some ways at odds in that moment.

[00:03:12] And so for me it was just, it was not a, uh, and candidly I was, I was wrong about the scale at which that would matter to people in particular as COVID and iOS changes occurred, you guys so perfectly timed that like you were very prescient about. That knowledge of sort of the growing complexity of that that was occurring relative to what I was seeing at the time.

[00:03:33] And so there was certainly a wave that you guys sat yourself squarely in and crushed. So, uh, kudos to you for being, uh, definitely right about what was coming in terms of what marketing wanted in that moment. For sure.

[00:03:44] Austin: thank you. But I think it's also, you know, it was an evolving landscape, like from your perspective, like people weren't running. Their business is the right way. And, and from your lens, in terms of thinking about CAC to LTV, which, you know, I remember seeing your videos back then, you know, you were

[00:03:58] definitely putting out, I still put out good stuff, you

[00:04:01] Taylor: Well that's funny that, that, yeah. 'cause that Kile TV video was the thing that kind of united us. Um, and then it's probably worth giving a shout out to Baba Gaza at the time who was building something called Nautilus in the early days. That was like also in the center of this conversation there.

[00:04:13] And, and some of the work we were doing and you were doing. There was this overlap of people who knew that there was a better way for things to be done, and we all chose our paths on it. And I think we, we we're appreciative of the success that we've had. But I, we have to name that like, for a long time that I was a vocal critic of the idea of MTA and, um, it's not actually, uh, what's brought us together.

[00:04:34] Isn't actually this idea that I am now going to wave the flag for MTA. I actually have watched you guys evolve in many ways that I think move us closer together in, in some specific things. One of my biggest issues back in the day was challenges related to the disassociation of optimization and attribution.

[00:04:53] So when these systems or that, and that was a lot of it, and I watched you guys. Go directly to Meta, pass back the data, create apex, move in that direction. And even now it's like, okay, incrementality geo holdout as a standard of measure. You guys are entering that arena. So I think that in many ways I've watched us evolve our views as we've gone through this in both directions and are finding this place that's like, Hey, either I see the way you see measurement.

[00:05:18] You acknowledge it's bigger than MTAI acknowledge that there's limitations, uh, in every platform's version of measurement. And so the, these things have moved more towards each other over time than they've moved apart. That's my experience of it.

[00:05:29] Austin: No, I think that's a good point. I mean, I remember when I saw you at the Meta Summit and you're like, okay. Uh, and at that time, meta announced that they were using, uh, our data and then Google's data that was, that was kind of around the pass back. So essentially their algorithm using attribution data from a third party.

[00:05:45] Right.

[00:05:46] Taylor: That's right.

[00:05:46] Austin: you were there and that's where you're like, okay, I saw in your eyes you're like, okay, maybe.

[00:05:52] Taylor: Yeah. That was, that was the first point of like, okay, that felt like an acknowledgement. Yeah. These things need, we wanna connect these things and there's genuine interest to try and create the best impact on whatever measurement that organization wants to use to decide efficacy, that we want to feed that to the system that's optimizing for sure.

[00:06:06] Austin: That's right. And MTA has evolved too. I mean, you know what's so exciting about MTA now? Is that what, at least at nor p, what we've developed this thing called clicks and deterministic views, right? So tailor views an ad on meta and doesn't do anything, doesn't click and doesn't convert for 45 days. But we could see it now. So we could see, you know, uh, NorAm could report that. So that's, there's a whole new world in MTA that's evolved and we could do a cross platform. Right. So you view something on meta, you've view something on TikTok, you've used something on Snapchat, you've used something on Lap Loving. We're gonna divide the credit Four Ways on a View over Long Horizons.

[00:06:43] That's, that's all new. That Nor Beam has just launched, uh, you know, later, last year. And really, you know, really excited about that. Now that's, that's totally changed the whole game of MTA.

[00:06:53] Taylor: I, I, I agree. And these, these are the evolutionary step function steps that have gotten me to a place where I'm like, okay, this is really helpful. And, and the thing you just brought up, one of the limitations that I have, frustrations with meta, um, as an optimization platform or even Google, is by default 28 1 1, but meta limits its optimization window to seven days.

[00:07:11] Um, and for many brands, this is a limiter, right? And so this is where the best option I have available to myself. Seven day click as the largest window of optimization is insufficient from a measurement standpoint for many businesses. So I, I look at this and go, okay, well I am bound by my set of options here as it relates to what I can tie together in some of these views.

[00:07:34] And so that's a big piece where I go, Hey, you're opening up 28 day windows. You're opening. Deterministic views across multiple platforms. These are really important data points to bring into the mix when the limitation on the platform side is only seven. I can't go any further than that, but it's insufficient.

[00:07:48] I, it's funny, we work with, I mean you guys have lots of these customers too, but brands with $2,500 AOVs and considerations in the 60 day period and, and when you've got a seven day optimization window, it's just like a really insufficient engine for assessing impact.

[00:08:03] Austin: And that's, that's well said. Uh, and and that's why Nor Beam's Apex are passing back of data to meta in terms of, that's why it's so great, right? Because if you have a $2,500 a OV product, NorAm can say, Hey, here's the number on. Or from our lens that looks good, that your algorithm could optimize for, to deliver the result, even if it's over along a horizon,

[00:08:25] meta's getting that number.

[00:08:27] And so

[00:08:27] it's, it's really, it's a very

[00:08:29] different landscape and it's exciting and give meta credit for, for doing it too.

[00:08:33] Yeah.

[00:08:33] Taylor: And the other thing that I've found, so the other era arena that you guys bring to the table is that in an AI era, I think this idea of owning your own first party data and being able to house every click that exists is so critically important. So I am very much obsessed with the idea of gathering as much data as I can for a business to be able to feed to whatever contextual LM I'm interacting with as part of that process.

[00:08:57] And. What I, the area that I think Meta has continued to struggle with is identity resolution around new versus returning customers. This is like a well warned story that there are just still significant gaps that being able to bring in first party interpretation of percent new visits and some of that information is really, really valuable.

[00:09:16] To that, the, the visual structure of brands that are hyper-focused on new customer acquisition.

[00:09:21] Austin: No, it's well said. And what's exciting, I mean, our CTO Dan Wang did his, um, he did his honors thesis in AI at Stanford in 2012, and it was around identity resolution. That was his focus. So that's why we're really excited to have him on board as our A CTO is the, he spent, you know, quite some time thinking. Problem. And, and we, we work with, you know, not just beta, a lot of platforms on helping them identify new versus returning customer, right? It's just like you said, key component. Um, because you know, at scale it makes a d even if it's a small difference for a business, it makes a huge difference, right?

[00:09:56] Taylor: That's right.

[00:09:56] Austin: swing one way or another, right?

[00:09:58] Taylor: So I look at those things. The first party data, the neighbors returning the percent new visits. The Apex data being passed back, the 28 day click, and these are all service area that I go. I have found a belief that you guys will help me provide better enterprise solutions to the customers we serve.

[00:10:13] So, um, I think that we could probably end up in a quagmire debating the merits of any specific MTA model, but that's not really my interest. And it's okay that across a large service area there's still disagreements. So, um, but I have, I have a lot of respect for what you guys are going after your care for the community.

[00:10:28] You've clearly embedded yourself. There's a lot of really smart people that interact with you guys, love you guys and appreciate the work that you do, and that's just undeniable. And so I think in our industry over the last five years, there have been a clear set of players that have emerged as the products that are here and care about this community, serve this community well.

[00:10:42] And you guys have done that. So, um, I

[00:10:44] Austin: too, obviously. Yeah.

[00:10:46] Taylor: Yeah. Likewise man. And I think, I think what, where we found each other. So if I go back to the start of this partnership, it's funny 'cause um, we would get lots of customers that would come to us using your platforms. And, uh, you called me, we had a a, I remember walking around my backyard having a, a, you know, a nice jovial conversation.

[00:11:03] And the general dialogue was like, Hey, it's not that I tell people not to use North Beam. We just don't, it's not part of our process. So

[00:11:09] Austin: Yeah.

[00:11:10] Taylor: like, when they come to us, it's not like I'm like, get rid of that crappy thing. It's just like. We don't need it for what we do. And so I think that was the seedlings.

[00:11:17] And to your credit, you said like, well, what would it be like to do that? What, how could we find some surface area where these things aren't in conflict? And that was the start of it. It was you, I think throwing in, uh, olive branch. It may have had some thorns on it, but it wasn't olive branch across the fence to chat and figure out like what would it look like.

[00:11:34] And I think we found an area that's unique that is maybe where our business models have diverged as we've grown. Um. Which is, maybe you can correct me if this is fair to say, but you guys have focused more and more onto the larger business, more of the mid-market and enterprise as you've grown. Um, and there's all sorts of reasons why that makes a ton of sense for solving complexity of media.

[00:11:54] Measurement gets harder as you get bigger for sure, and maybe it's been harder to serve a part of the market that's you still get a lot of attention from, which is the s and b crowd. Maybe you can say a little bit more about your journey there.

[00:12:04] Austin: Yeah. No, it's great. I mean, you know, we love all of our customers and wanna support 'em as best we can, and so that's why I'm ex excited about the partnership with you, right? Like, um, you're, you know, great team at at, at CTC, um, you're, you're doing a lot within your own platform, right? And now you can add NorAm data to that, uh, mix of data that you guys use.

[00:12:27] I believe it's stats, right? And your,

[00:12:30] um. And, uh, help serve your customers. And I think if you're a small customer, uh, you know, and you could work with a, a common thread, small in the sense of, you know, what would you, how would you define your customer base?

[00:12:43] Taylor: Yeah, so I think that what we've found is that we wanna serve the bulk of the Shopify ecosystem. And so when I look at that from a volume standpoint, I think that 95% of the Shopify volume exists in sub $5 million. So that doesn't mean that all our customers there, but I'd say in the the seven and eight figure store owner is where we sit.

[00:13:03] And so we've kind of said, Hey, you, we overlap in the eight figures. You guys take that. But seven figures, and I think this is where some of my Sean thesis, where the difference between a software business model and a service business model allow for me to maybe take on. Some of the burden of customer management that doesn't make sense at the lower market for you.

[00:13:21] And we can bring to bear where we'll take on the, the implementation cost, we'll take on the management relationship because our billing and service structure allows for that at the SMB level, where it might not for software. Um, and so that's where we see opportunity.

[00:13:35] Austin: No, it's great. And that's what so neat about this partnership right, is that you'll, um, you'll give that strategic advice to that core group to help them get to the next level. We could provide data that helps them perform better, um, which helps. The customer helps a common thread.

[00:13:52] It's a win all around.

[00:13:53] Taylor: Yep, that's exactly

[00:13:54] Austin: that's what's, and it's neat, I mean, you're giving me too much credit. I think you, you, you had a lot about bringing the whole partnership together and making it work. Um, it's always a team effort, I guess, but I think you had a lot of great ideas around how to do it. Um, and uh, yeah, I think it's neat.

[00:14:10] I mean, for us it's evolved. Just, you know, it's very hard for us to, you know. Um, you know, we, we we're careful with our pricing and so, uh, NorAm is an expensive product to run relative to the rest of the market because we do a lot more data processing than all of our, uh, the people that do what we do, uh, astronomically more so. And then, you know, you mentioned we launched incrementality testing, but we do it in with full automation. Um, across all the different platforms that we're rolling out. So it's much more efficient than the other players and more accurate, uh, and more seamless and tied into your MTA. So

[00:14:43] what we build at Nor Beam costs us a lot of money and it's hard to run, hard to build. Um, so as a consequence, it makes it hard to support so small customer. We just don't feel comfortable charging

[00:14:54] Taylor: That's, that's right. And, and that's where we go, okay, well we think we can absorb some of that cost and we can provide it in the context of our service offering and bring it to life. And so to be clear, the partnership is for CTC to provide North Beam two seven figure store owners to those that are in the earlier stages of their journey in a way that is unique, uh, to our service function.

[00:15:15] And real quick, I don't, Austin, I think we've been going back and forth with your team. I don't know if you've even seen this. I'm gonna show you real quick. Allow me to share my window. Okay. Can you see my screen?

[00:15:29] Austin: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:30] Taylor: Okay, so this is, this is how this is gonna come to life practically is that, um, when we have a customer, we're gonna set them up inside of stats and you'll see up here little North Beam integration that's gonna allow us to turn, um, all of our, uh, media measurements.

[00:15:44] So you can see default sort of ROAS as the presentation here. If we click this on. Then now we get all of this North Beam channel level performance data. You can see new visit percentage nac, new A-O-V-A-M-E-R. So all that critical, those critical metrics. And then, uh, we can, uh, change the default, uh, attribution view depending on what the brand timeline, uh, measures to.

[00:16:06] So that allows us to bring this to life directly within our platform. Sourced from your data on behalf of our customers. Uh. At ctc, so it's really cool. We're super excited about this visual and seven figure sonar. And part of this is, I think it's worth talking about the incrementality thing. 'cause I think we both believe that incrementality.

[00:16:23] Is I an ideal part of the measurement stack, but if you're a store spending 10 to $15,000 a month, you likely aren't creating enough conversions in any specific geo in order to take advantage of that tool yet. So on your pathway to that journey. We think that that's where North Beam's tooling can be really great, uh, for those early stage brands as a subsidy to where we both will get them.

[00:16:47] 'cause we offer incrementality. You offer incrementality. That's a growth journey that they'll get to at some point. But in the meantime, we can stand, uh, in that gap with them, uh, along the way. So just a cool little preview of how that comes to life.

[00:16:59] Austin: exciting. Yeah. One thing, uh, we launched in Nor Beam that I, I don't, what I, a little quick shout out is you could show your new customer traffic. You could show a, we created a new bucket of traffic, which, uh, bucket of traffic, which is people that have visited your site but haven't bought. Right. And then the third bucket, of course, is returning customers, right? So you want to have the first bucket, brand new people, second bucket, people that keep coming back that you just haven't converted them yet. And then the third bucket, of course, is your existing base. I love to look at that with our customers, just to see that three lens, it's a newer lens that we provide

[00:17:35] Taylor: Yep. Yeah. And that's all the first party data that again, you think about enriching. Uh, one of my big initiatives for CTC is like. Database enrichment for the sake of allowing LLMs to be effective. And so this is all super good stuff. So, so if you're out there and you're a seven figure sonar that maybe had tried to interact with North Beam before and weren't able to because it was price constrictive, or they, you know, they had the certain spend thresholds, we're here for you.

[00:17:59] We'd love to chat and we

[00:18:00] Austin: There we go. Look at that.

[00:18:01] Taylor: exclusive provider to that part of the market for this period of time and be able to say, Hey, we think there's an opportunity that we can operationalize this data on your behalf. Stay committed to our goals of driving contribution margin growth predictably and profitably for our brands, and do that through, uh, the enhancement and enrichment of this data.

[00:18:16] So I'm excited about it. I think that there's incredible ways that we're gonna integrate that into the profit system and the way we do our work. Nothing's changing on CTC and now we just get to add. And, and my mission really is like, I think that as the world moves, we wanna bring enterprise grade solutions to SMBs to help them be successful.

[00:18:33] Um, and if I look at like what Shopify did around the idea of arming the rebels, it was that the way we help entrepreneurs succeed, the way that we help these SMBs to grow is to bring the best in class tooling to life on their behalf. And that's what CTC is after. And so to be able to partner with what you guys are up to is really cool.

[00:18:49] Austin: That was exciting. That was a good recap. And, uh, yeah, excited to see clicks and deterministic views in there

[00:18:55] too, like

[00:18:55] Taylor: that's right.

[00:18:56] Austin: veteran. And you know, that's what's neat about that is that gives you, uh, a new lens into how your customers are engaging with, uh, your business over long horizons, not again, outside the seven or even 30. So,

[00:19:10] yeah.

[00:19:10] Taylor: So we're gonna have lots of cool, cool stuff coming, you know, Matt, at your team and, uh, Zach are awesome. And we've got, we're gonna be at the meta, uh, performance summit together. Come say hi to us. We've got some cool video content coming. Um, and we're hoping to keep building on this and to bring two best in class, uh, solutions and providers together to sort of operationalize attribution.

[00:19:31] That's our, that's our tack line that

[00:19:32] Austin: I love it. Oh, there we go. I, well, we'll have some more announcements come in. There's some neat stuff. Maybe we could do it together. We'll, we'll announce some neat stuff. It'll be

[00:19:41] Taylor: Yeah. Well, hey, I appreciate the, uh, back and forth over many years, man, and for reaching out and figuring out for us the way to do this. I'm glad we made it happen. Uh, congrats on all the success. Uh, I still am, uh, kick myself sometimes when I, uh, go, go to bed at night over rejecting the early offer you gave me to participate in the North Beam journey.

[00:19:59] But, uh, you guys have done a great job serving this community and we're excited to do it, uh, alongside you going forward.

[00:20:05] Austin: Likewise. It's a real honor and pleasure and uh, yeah. Excited to work together. Thanks everybody.

[00:20:09] Taylor: Awesome. Well go get some sleep, man. I know you, uh, got off a

[00:20:12] Austin: No, I actually feel energized now. That was good. I'm back. I'm back. You're so good at this. I told I you're, you're so good at podcasting that, uh, you gimme some energy, so

[00:20:23] Taylor: Good man. Good. Well, we're excited. Check us out. Uh, and we would love to talk to you those seven figure store owners that are interested in North Beam. And if you're an eight or nine figure, just go directly to 'em. Give 'em a call. They'll get you guys set up and we'll make it happen. But, um, more to come from us in this market and we're committed to continuing to make things happen for these early stage business owners that need these tools to, uh, help them grow their business so well, so Awesome.

[00:20:44] It's a pleasure, man. Talk soon.

[00:20:46] Austin: Thanks everybody. See ya.